A blog that backs a bi-monthly magazine covering all the islands of Scotland

Monday, 24 October 2011

Deaths on a Beach

Saturday's item on this blog was right in anticipating Sunday Times Scotland coverage of the slaughter of goats on Rum. It also attracted these two photographs of goat carcases, taken by a hill walker on the beach at Harris on Rum, close to the mausoleum in the Greek temple-style evident at the top of the image above. Ironically it was built to house the sarcophagus of John Bullogh who owned the island from 1888-91. The goat carcasses have been crudely netted and badly hidden. This cull of around 60 goats, which took place last week, served no apparent purpose for neither records were taken nor investigations made in relation to the climate-change project in which these animals have been a part. Can anyone add anymore to this dismal story?

According to SNH's own figures the total population of goats on Rum at the present time is 350. For reasons best known to themselves they want to reduce it to 270. SNH maintain the goats are destroying valuable habitat but as they have lived on the cliffs for generations and in harmony with their surroundings long before SNH first set foot on Rum, it is difficult to know what the problem is. Any trees planted by SNH are fenced anyway. The goats have become so hefted to the cliff faces they occasionally feed on young seabirds!